These Photographs are of girls and women rescued from the artisanal mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Congolese teenager Eliane Ilunga was so poor and emotionally broken that she couldn’t even afford to hope for a better life. She couldn’t see a future beyond the dirty, tiresome, backbreaking work she endured at the toxic artisanal cobalt mines in the southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. HEAR Congo; a Miami-based nonprofit is empowers them with job training, leadership skills, and literacy classes
